You can’t exactly blame Guy Ritchie for wanting to go back to what he knows best. After Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, both of which are firm favourites of mine, Ritchie decided to try his hand at two very different projects in the form of Swept Away and Revolver. I am actually one of the few who appreciated the latter because of how ambitious it was, even if it didn’t come off as well as it could have.

So it seems the negative feedback Ritchie received after branching out has scared him back into his own neck of the woods, and he has come up with RocknRolla, a film which, because of eager anticipation and the fact I know just how good he can be, is a huge disappointment, having only a few saving graces to save it from complete failure.

A real estate scam is set in place by a Russian billionaire in London, putting millions up for grabs which naturally grabs the attentions of the underworld of criminals that fills the streets, including hands-on men like The Wild Bunch (Gerard Butler, Tom Hardy, and Idris Elba) and the established boss Lenny Cole (Tom Wikinson).

Guy Ritchie is a filmmaker who came crashing in out of nowhere in the late '90s with his quick-witted, smart-talking gangster flick Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and it garnered him a great deal of attention. He then took another swing on similar ground with Snatch, an exercise that improved on his initial effort. Those two films had some of best, most memorable, most quotable dialogue I had heard in years all delivered by some fantastically well written characters. Yes, the depth might have not been very, well, deep but all other elements were so entertaining and fun that depth was the last thing on the audience’s minds. RocknRolla, however, has little of what made Ritchie’s first two efforts so enjoyable, and instead it feels like Ritchie imitating Ritchie.

After Lock, Stock and Snatch, there were a slew of other filmmakers who thought they could do what Ritchie did. But for the most part they failed in matching the quality set by the man himself and the films succumbed to the frequent comment, “Ritchie could have done it much better.” So one would hope that Ritchie would come kicking through the door, rubbing his hands together and saying something along the lines of, “Watch how it should be done.” Well he may every well have said that before shooting started on RocknRolla, but he hasn’t delivered, at least not the quality he rightfully should have. This effort feels forced, unnatural, artificial, and very hard to get on board with. Yes, the characters are there with their quirky looks and funny little nicknames but it doesn’t feel innate; it feels like Ritchie only put them in there because “that’s what it’s supposed to be like,” instead of just letting it flow like his first two films did. It’s hard to explain, something I think that can only be put across if you see the movie. The wafer thin plot somehow still manages to be puzzling.